Laughing Does Not Erase Them

The afternoon light is unforgiving. It exposes the dust motes dancing in the air while your heart feels heavy with the dead.

And then it happens—a memory surfaces, something funny, something bright, and you laugh. Immediately, the panic rises.

You think you are betraying them. You think that by finding joy in the memory, you are erasing the weight of their absence.

But listen. The light does not demand that you carry grief as proof of love.

Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend, yet he also shared meals and laughter with him while he was alive. The sorrow and the joy are not enemies; they are both threads of the same cloth.

Your laughter does not diminish the loss. It honors the life that was lived.

The light within you is big enough to hold the tears and the smile at the same time. You are not forgetting them by laughing; you are remembering that they were real.